Richest

[Homicidalheathen]

Number 2

Amado Carrillo Fuentes, aka the ““Lord of the Skies”

Country of operation: Mexico

Clients: USA, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile.

Product: Cocaine

Fuentes learned the drug trade by working for Colombians during the cocaine boom, but his first brilliant move was to eschew cash payments. Instead of cash, Amado took his pay in coke and used it to develop his own distribution system. As Colombian cartels buckled under the crackdown of the late 1980s, Fuentes was turning the colossal Juarez Cartel in Mexico into a $30-million-a-day juggernaut -- in large part due to his audacious decision to use a fleet of 727s to ship product from Peru, Bolivia and Colombia to Mexico. At his peak, he had Mexico’s top drug enforcement official on his payroll, and his own net worth was believed to be somewhere around $25 billion.

Downfall: Although a sophisticated and diplomatic businessman, Amado’s operation was so huge that he inevitably became the most wanted trafficker in the world.

Status: In 1997, plastic surgeons altering his appearance fatally botched the procedure; those surgeons were later discovered stuffed into oil drums.

Number 1

Pablo Escobar

Country of operation: Colombia

Clients: North, Central & South America, the Caribbean, Western Europe, and possibly Asia.

Product: Cocaine

Pablo Escobar was not the most intelligent drug lord, nor was he the most organized or the most innovative. Simply put: He was the most ruthless, and this made all the difference. The head of the Medellin Cartel ran his empire with virtual impunity within Colombia, carrying out a campaign of violence against anyone who dared challenge it, resulting in the assassination of 30 judges, over 400 police officers, and the bombing of Avianca Flight 203 in the mistaken belief that Colombian presidential candidate Gaviria was on board (he wasn’t, but 107 civilians were). Estimates put the Medellin kill toll at over 3,000.

At its peak, Escobar’s cartel is believed to have controlled four-fifths of the world cocaine market, seeing an estimated annual revenue of $30 billion (roughly double the revenue for Oracle between Colombia and the U.S.).

Downfall: Anxious about being extradited to the U.S., Escobar brokered a sweetheart deal with the Colombian movement that put him in the most luxurious prison imaginable, but Escobar couldn’t stay out of trouble and soon he fled the prison.

Status: Pablo Escobar died in 1993 after being hunted down by Colombian and U.S. government forces.

i need a new drug lord

Notably missing from this list is Frank Lucas, subject of the Denzel Washington film America Gangster. Although the film portrays him as one of the era’s most powerful drug lords, it has since been revealed that the movie’s source material was Lucas himself (to a magazine writer some years ago) and that, in the words of one of the case’s prosecutors, the film is “1% reality and 99% Hollywood.”

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[Homicidalheathen]

Felix Mitchell, aka “The Cat”

Country of operation: USA

Clients: USA

Product: Heroin, crack cocaine

“Mob 69,” Mitchell’s massive, gang-controlled drug operation, was the first of its kind, and he controlled it in part with a brilliant bit of PR: Sponsoring local athletics and taking children on field trips to zoos and amusement parks. Yet, when he was thrown in prison, a new kind of inner-city violence was born: what had been a tightly controlled monopoly under Mitchell became an unstable battleground in his absence, replete with drive-bys and increased violence between competitors vying for his business.